Study shows ancient Canaanites survived divine call in Bible for them to be wiped out

The ancient Canaanites survived a divine call for their elimination and went on to become modern-day Lebanese, a study has found.

According to the Bible, God had ordered the Israelites to exterminate the Canaanites, a people who lived between 3,000 and 4,000 years ago in the Middle East.

“You shall not leave alive anything that breathes," the passage in Deuteronomy reads. "But you shall utterly destroy them ... so that they may not teach you to do according to all their detestable things which they have done for their gods.”

The Bible claims elsewhere that the purge was not successful, an account backed up now by a scientific study.

Examining the DNA of the region's ancient and modern inhabitants, the scientists found more than 90 per cent of the ancestry of modern-day Lebanese derived from the Canaanites.

The temple of Bacchus in Lebanon's Beqaa Valley, built by the CanaanitesCredit:
EPA

“The Bible reports the destruction of the Canaanite cities and the annihilation of its people; if true, the Canaanites could not have directly contributed genetically to present-day populations,” the researchers wrote in the American Journal of Human Genetics.

“However, no archaeological evidence has so far been found to support widespread destruction of Canaanite cities between the Bronze and Iron Ages: cities on the Levant coast such as Sidon and Tyre show continuity of occupation until the present day.

“We show that present-day Lebanese derive most of their ancestry from a Canaanite-related population, which therefore implies substantial genetic continuity in the Levant since at least the Bronze Age.”

The scientists came to the conclusion by comparing five whole genomes, obtained from the base of skulls from ancient remains found in the area of Sidon, with those of 99 Lebanese living in the region today.

"One of the most exciting parts of the research was to get DNA out of the specimens," one of the researchers, Chris Tyler-Smith, told the ABC.

The modern-day Lebanese are "likely to be direct descendants of the Canaanites" said Dr Marc Haber, of The Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute, according to the Independent.

"But they have in addition a small proportion of Eurasian ancestry that may have arrived via conquests by distant populations such as the Assyrians, Persians, or Macedonians.”

Correction: The original version of this story erroneously said the Bible claimed the Canaanites were wiped. However, elsewhere in the Bible, it says the elimination was not successful.